Princess Dramas

Mladinsko Theatre

Première: 1. 12. 2015, Mladinsko Theatre
Running time approximately 2 hours 10 minutes. No interval.

Original title Prinzessinnendramen: Der Tod und das Mädchen I–V

Translators Urška P. Černe, Anja Uršič, Sandra Baumgartner-Naylor, Lučka Jenčič, Amalija Maček
Director Michał Borczuch
Author of the text adaptation and dramaturg Tomasz Śpiewak
Costume and Set designer Dorota Nawrot
Choreographer Dragana Alfirević
Composer Bartosz Dziadosz
Lighting designer Jacqueline Sobiszewski
Language consultant Mateja Dermelj
Make-up designer Nathalie Horvat
Author of video Maruša Oblak
Interpreter tutorials and whisperer Špela Kopitar
Assistant to language consultant Katarina Krapež
Adaptor of Rozamunda translation Maruša Oblak
Stage manager Janez Pavlovčič

Snow White
Snow White Anja Novak
Hunter Boris Kos

Sleeping Beauty
Princess Daša Doberšek
Prince Boris Kos
Delivery Man Samir Alibegić

Rosamunde
Rosamunde Maruša Oblak
Fulvio Boris Kos
Nurse Anja Novak

Jackie
Jackie Damjana Černe

The Wall
Ingeborg Janja Majzelj
Sylvia Daša Doberšek
Ingeborg Damjana Černe
Sylvia Maruša Oblak
Anja Novak

The project was supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Ljubljana.

Princess Dramas by the controversial writer and Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek are the missing half of Shakespeare’s royal tragedies. The concealed reality of the maiden, female, more or less feminine experience, the experience of a gender eternally branded as weaker, less interesting and after all less justified to be theatrically depicted. The concealed reality of princesses who cannot be saved by any prince, no matter how noble his descent, how true his intentions or how meticulous his hairstyle might be. It is the reality of maidens whose eternal companion, interlocutor and confidante can only be Death, whatever appearance it might take on.
This is a cycle of five monological miniatures. The heroines are half-mythologised female characters whose roots lie in fairytales and the world of media, coated with Schubert’s composition Maiden and Death: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Sylvia Plath, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jacqueline Onassis and Mrs Jelinek herself.
And if the author once claimed, with a right pertinent only to those citizens who express their patriotism with critical distance: "Austria is a small world in which the big world exercises” – what is then Slovenia?

"Princess Dramas by Elfriede Jelinek, directed by Michał Borczuch, speaks neither of princesses nor of women but of a wall or rather of the helplessness of human beings to reach the fullness of the potential named life. /.../ In this staging, the five stories of repetitions with minor differences might be read as one story of one person or one world, where the dramaturgical-directorial duo achieved the nearly impossible: to sculpt a forest of symbols out of Jelinek’s verbal surfaces, a forest from which familiar eyes keep gazing at us.”

Saška Rakef, Radio Slovenija 1, 2 December 2015